Dorinda's Secret

by Deborah Gregory

  “No you didn’t,” Nestor says nastily.

  “Yes I did, but I didn’t want to stay,” Chantelle says.

  Twinkie nuzzles up to me and puts her head on my shoulder, her fuzzy hair flouncing all the over the place. “I bet you that boy wuz looking for somebody.”

  Twinkie is so smart. “Yeah. I bet you he was,” I reply, then hold her tight while we watch the show.

  “I wanna find my father,” Khalil announces. It’s the first time he’s ever said anything like that. I notice that Nestor is pretending he’s not listening.

  “How do you know you’ve got a father?” Chantelle asks, with an attitude.

  “’Cuz I do. My mother told me,” Khalil says matter-of-factly.

  “You have a mother?” I ask, surprised.

  “Of course I have a mother, stupid,” Khalil says, getting annoyed now.

  “Well, I don’t,” I say, just to show him I’m not stupid.

  “Yes you do,” Khalil says. “Everybody has a mother.”

  “Well, I never saw her!” I exclaim, embarrassed.

  “Don’t you ever want to find your mother?” Nestor asks, ganging up on me too.

  “I don’t know,” I say, determined not to let them win. I’m not going to tell them about my sister at Mrs. Parkay’s—she was my first foster mother, the one who gave me away. I try not to think about her anymore, because Mrs. Parkay probably doesn’t want to see me anymore—and I sure don’t want to see her.

  “I’ll bet you my mother has long hair like an angel,” Twinkie says, smiling. “I know she’s gonna come and get me one day.”

  I can’t believe Twinkie said that! When I was younger, I used to think the same thing. Of course, I don’t anymore. I don’t know where my mom is, or whether she’s alive or dead—I’d like to at least find out someday, but I guess I never will.

  Now Arba climbs up onto my lap. Poor Arba. Her mother came to America from Albania looking for a better life, but died of pneumonia. At least one day she will know where her mother is. When she’s older, I’ll make sure she knows.

  “I know what Khalil’s daddy looks like,” Nestor says, hitting Khalil on the head.

  “Yeah—how do you know?” Khalil riffs back.

  “He’s got a big coconut head—like you!”

  “Yeah—well, we know your father probably has a big mouth, Nestlé’s Quik,” I tell Nestor.

  Corky and Twinkie start giggling. Arba has fallen asleep on my lap, so I take her into her bedroom and put her in bed. I kiss her on the cheeks, and she whispers, “Good night, Do-reedy.”

  Chapter 2

  As I lie on my pillow, I can’t stop thinking about that runaway boy, Paulo Rivera. Why did he tell all those lies? I wonder if he was just trying to pull an okeydokey and get money out of people by making them feel sorry for him. Who wouldn’t feel sorry for a kid hiking, biking, and sailing 2,000 miles just to find his father, right?

  When they found him, the reporter said, he had $150 in his pockets. Tossing in my bed, I decide I would never go looking for my family, you know what I’m saying? I don’t care where my mother and father are. They obviously don’t love me, or I wouldn’t be here.

  I can feel myself starting to cry, but I get mad instead. I’m tired of crying about stupid people who don’t care about me. All of a sudden, I start crying anyway—but I think it’s because I’m crying for Paulo. They shouldn’t put him in a foster home—he must feel so scared right now. Why don’t they just let him go back home to his aunt?

  She doesn’t want him anymore—that’s probably why. That thought makes me angry, and I peek out from behind the pillow to see if Monie sees me crying.

  She’s just gotten home from her boyfriend Hector’s house. Now she’s sitting at the dresser, writing something—probably a stupid love letter to Hector, because I know she never does her homework. She’s already been left back once, and she hates me because I got skipped twice. (I’m only twelve, but my crew doesn’t know I’m so young—they think I’m fourteen like them, and I’m too afraid to tell them the truth. They’d probably never want to speak with me again, let alone chill with me!)

  I cover my face with the pillow again, because the light from the lamp is bothering me. Then, all of a sudden, I find myself blurting out, “Do you ever think about your mother?”

  Monie looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “No,” she says, getting an attitude, “and I don’t know why you’re lying there thinking about something so stupid.”

  Chantelle doesn’t say anything; she just keeps popping her gum. What was I thinking about, talking to Monie? Her brain is on permanent vacation, you know? She doesn’t understand anything. Neither does Chantelle. And my other foster sisters are too young. I wish I had a real sister like the twins. They have each other.

  Well, actually, I do have a real sister. We were together in my first foster home. But she got to stay there, and I didn’t, and that’s the last I ever saw or heard from her.

  Thank goodness for the Cheetah Girls. Having my crew—especially Chanel—is as close to having sisters as I’ll ever get. Even so, it’s not the same as having a real one… .

  I’m in an apartment, and this pretty brown lady is showing me all her beautiful clothes. “You can come live with me and pick out all the clothes you want to wear,” she says.

  It’s a really big apartment, and there are lots and lots of beautiful clothes everywhere. I start trying on some of the clothes, but they’re all too big for me.

  “Don’t worry, when you grow up, you can wear these clothes, because I’ll give them all to you,” the pretty lady says. I ask her why. She tells me, “I’m your mother, that’s why”

  I start crying, and I hug her. She is so tall, and her skin is smooth chocolate. When she smiles, she looks like a movie star with really white teeth.

  I don’t even feel mad at her anymore… .

  The noise from a car alarm wakes me up from my dream. I look at the clock and see that it’s seven in the morning—time for me to get up and go to my Saturday morning vocal and dance lessons at Drinka Champagne Conservatory.

  I walk to the bathroom, but somebody is in it. “Hurry up!” I yell, tapping my knuckles on the door.

  I wonder who the lady in the dream was. She didn’t look like anybody I know.

  Maybe it was my mother. Maybe I’m psychic or something, like Chanel, and her father’s girlfriend, Princess Pamela, who has a fortune-telling parlor.

  Leaning against the bathroom door in a trance, I daydream about what my mother looks like. I guess I would like to know. She’s probably pretty, and brown-skinned—and too busy to take care of me.

  Suddenly I realize that I forgot to do my biology homework! I never space out like that. What was I supposed to be reading? That’s right—the chapter on DNA—the stuff to do with genetics.

  I’m in such a trance that when Twinkie opens up the bathroom door, I fall inside the doorway. She giggles and covers her head to keep me from falling on her. “Big cheetah bobo, you going to dance class now?” she asks, peering up at me.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish I could go. I wanna be a Cheetah Girl too,” Twinkie says, pleadingly.

  She always makes me feel so guilty about being in the Cheetah Girls. It’s true I spend less time with her these days. And now she wants to be a part of what I’m doing.

  “You know how you like to draw all those beautiful butterflies?” I say as I wash my face and hands.

  “Yeah,” Twinkie says.

  “Well, dancing is what I like to do—and now, I’m singing too.” I know she doesn’t get it.

  “Yeah, but I wanna dance and sing, too—if you’ll let me!”

  “You can dance and sing, Twinkie—if you want to do something badly enough, there’s nobody in the world can stop you, least of all me. I’ll tell you what—we’re gonna find out if you can do something at school—”

  “I wanna do it with you!” Twinkie insists, giggling and whining at the same time, like she always d
oes.

  “You can’t.”

  “Okay, you big Cheetah bunny—I’m gonna flush you down the toilet!”

  I tickle Twinkie, then run out of there and back into the bedroom to get dressed. I love going to Drinka Champagne Conservatory for vocal and dance classes—it’s the bomb, and we always have a lotta fun, too. We are the Cheetah Girls, of course, and that means all five of us meet there—unlike during the week, when we go to separate schools. Aqua and Angie just got transferred to the Performing Arts League, which is an annex of LaGuardia Performing Arts School—they’re right next door to each other near Lincoln Center, and both of them are dope performing arts schools. As for me, Galleria, and Chanel, we all go to Fashion Industries East together.

  As I’m running out the door, I feel around my neck, and realize I forgot to put on my Cheetah Girls choker, so I run back inside my room to get it. We made the Cheetah Girl chokers ourselves. We bought cheetah-printed strips of suede, then glued metal letters on them to spell the words GROWL POWER. The chokers are really dope looking, and they hold together fine—now.

  At first, when we were trying to sell them, a lot of the lettering fell off. It was totally embarrassing, and I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s over, thank goodness. Now I actually enjoy wearing my choker. It tells the world who and what I am—“Do’ Re Mi” Rogers, a Cheetah Girl with Ferocious Flava!

  “Can we make a butterfly dress later?” Twinkie asks me, following me into the room.

  “Yeah, later.”

  See, for Thanksgiving, the kids in Twinkie’s school are making costumes, and Twinkie wants to be a butterfly instead of a turkey—even though her teacher says she has to stay with the theme of Thanksgiving.

  That’s Twinkie for you. I told her to tell him that she’s one of the butterflies who came with the first settlers to Plymouth Rock or something. She liked that idea.

  “Twinkie, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Mrs. Tattle, our caseworker, is coming over at two o’clock—so I won’t be back here in time to get everybody ready. I want you to wear your pink sweater with the pom-poms. Would you do that for me?”

  “Okay. Bye, pom-pom poot-butt!”

  “I’m gonna get you later for that, Twinkie,” I chuckle as I put the Cheetah Girl choker around my neck. Twinkie is still standing next to me, staring.

  “Twink—do you think these chokers are big enough?”

  “Yeah—you look like a big Cheetah Gorilla!”

  “No, seriously—is the band wide enough?”

  She shakes her head, then blurts out, “How come I can’t have one?”

  That makes me feel really bad. How come I was only thinking about myself?

  I touch the metal letters on the choker again. I can feel the letters spelling GROWL POWER. We must have it, all right, or Def Duck Records wouldn’t be interested in putting us in the studio with big cheese producer Mouse Almighty to cut some tracks. I wonder when it’s gonna happen. Every day we hope to hear something, but so far, nada.

  I yell good-bye to Mrs. Bosco, who is sitting at the kitchen table with Corky, then give Arba a big hug. Twinkie is right at my heels.

  “I’m counting on you, Cheetah Rita Butterfly,” I whisper to her. Rita is Twinkie’s real name, but I think it’s her nickname—not Twinkie, but the one I gave her, Butterfly—that really makes her spread her wings.

  Chapter 3

  Miss Winnie, the receptionist at Drinka Champagne’s Conservatory, gives me a big smile when she sees me. “Dorinda, how you doin’?” she asks, like she really wants to know.

  I can’t believe how nice everybody is to me here at the Conservatory—and I haven’t even paid one ducket for anything! That’s because Drinka (who founded this conservatory for divettes-in-training like the Cheetah Girls) gave me a full one-year scholarship. Miss Winnie even put me in Vocal 201, instead of 101, so I could be with my crew.

  See, Galleria and Chanel have been coming to Drinka’s for two years now, and Angie and Aqua could sing like (almost) divas even before we met them. I’m a good dancer, but I’m still learning to sing. More important, next to the rest of the Cheetah Girls, I still feel like a wanna-be star in the jiggy jungle, just like the words in the song Bubbles wrote.

  “I’m just fine, Miss Winnie. Are the rest of the Cheetah Girls here yet?”

  “Yes. And you girls better take a look at the bulletin board, too. There’s something you may be interested in,” Miss Winnie adds, winking at me.

  That must mean there’s something dope, like an audition or something. See, sometimes casting directors who are looking for young talent contact Drinka’s Conservatory, so the school puts up notices on the bulletin board. Drinka was the queen of disco back in the day, and she still has mad “connects” all over the place.

  I wonder what’s jumping down. But I don’t get a chance to check it out right away, because it’s time for class to begin!

  “Dorinda—qué linda!” exclaims Chanel when I walk into the studio. The Cheetah Girls are all so hyped these days, ever since we had our big meeting with Def Duck Records. Like I said, they’re gonna put us in a studio with big cheese producer, Mouse Almighty, to cut a few songs for a possible demo. We don’t know when it’s going to go down, but we are definitely “in the house with Mouse,” as Bubbles puts it.

  I hug Chanel first. Even though I’m down with all the Cheetah Girls, I definitely feel the closest with Chanel. We have a lot in common. I mean, her pops is gone, and she and her mom don’t exactly seem to be watching the same Telemundo television show, if you know what I’m saying. Her mom doesn’t want Chanel to just be herself. I mean, Chanel may not be good at math or spelling, but she is really sweet. She knows how to make people feel like she cares about them, and how to make you laugh—and that counts for a lot—especially in our crew.

  “Guess who’s here? It’s Do’ Re Mi—so now we can flip it like posse!” Bubbles chants, giving me a Cheetah Girls handshake. She has on a hot-pink sweater and pink lipstick, which makes her look kinda like her nickname—a juicy piece of bubble gum!

  “Galleria, you heard anything else from the Def Duck peeps?” I ask. All this waiting just to hear when we can kick it in the studio makes me so anxious. I just want us to move and groove already, ayiight?

  “Nada,” Galleria says, shaking her head. I can tell she’s on the anxious tip, too. “I can’t wait till we can get into a studio. I mean enuf with the powder puff!”

  “I heard that,” I groan.

  “Daddy doesn’t understand why they just don’t give us a record deal,” Aquanette says, her eyes popping wide. “I told him the music business is not like the pest control business—you can’t just expect a roach to crawl up into a roach motel and be done with it!”

  I chuckle at Aqua’s joke. The twins have definitely gotten more live, if you know what I’m saying.

  After our class, Drinka pulls all five of us aside. “Now listen, Cheetah Girls, there’s a notice upstairs I want you to look at—the ‘Battle of the Divettes’ competition.”

  Chanel jumps up and down like a Mexican jumping bean.

  “Now, a lot of the students are gonna try out for it, but I think this one has your name written all over it—‘divettes.’ Drinka’s red lip gloss is shining like a neon sign as she breaks into a big smile, showing off the biggest, whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. “Send in your tape and see if you get an audition for it.”

  “What kind of tape?” Bubbles asks, looking at us.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t made a videotape of yourselves performing yet?” Drinka asks, like she can’t believe it. Suddenly, I feel like a wanna-be all over again.

  “Dag on, I guess we haven’t,” Aqua pipes up, looking sullen.

  “Well, run out and make one,” Drinka commands us. “Au revoir, mes chéries.” Drinka lays on the thick French accent, the way Chanel’s mom, Juanita, does.

  “Au revoir,” Chanel coos.

  “Croissant,” g
iggles Bubbles, and kisses Drinka on the cheek.

  Drinka was right. The “Battle of the Divettes” competition does seem like it has our names written on it. The headline on the posting reads: If you think you’re fierce, call and submit your tape. (Photo and bio optional.)

  “Oh, lawdy, lawd,” Angie says, grabbing her sister Aqua’s hand and continuing to read the listing. “Unsigned talent who make ‘The Grade’ will compete on air. MTV will finance and air a professionally produced video of the grand-prize winner!”

  “Remember those girls—‘In the Dark’?” Aqua asks. “You know—the leader of the group wears a fake eye patch, and the other girls have got those monkey-head canes?”

  “Yeah,” Angie says, scrunching up her nose. “I told you I don’t like them. She’s trying to look like Zorro, with that black eye patch covered with rhinestones.” I think they’re too flashy for the twins, if you know what I’m saying.

  “Yes, we know what you think, Miz Anginette, but you know how she got to floss that eye patch in the first place? By winning the grand prize on The Grade,” Bubbles says exasperated. “Now those girls have it made in the shade.”

  “Is that right?” Angie responds sheepishly.

  “If they can get a deal by thumping around with those wack-a-doodle-do monkey canes and that fake eye patch action, then imagine what a bunch of cheetah-fied divettes could get?” Galleria continues. “We should pounce right to first place just by licking our paws on the air, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Okay, Miss Galleria, we know what you’re saying,” Aqua says, cracking a smile now that she gets Galleria’s point.

  “I’d enter the ‘Battle of the Divettes’ contest even if they were just giving away Goofy Grape sodas for first prize!” I say, chuckling. The whole idea sounds good to me—as long as we’re not actually signed by Def Duck, we’re still eligible.

  “I know that’s right,” Aqua pipes up, confirming what I was thinking without blinking.

  We continue reading the listing, and find out that the Battle of the Divettes competition is being held at the Apollo Theatre uptown. We look at each other, and I know we’re all thinking the same thing. Oh, no, say it ain’t so. Not another Nightmare on 125th Street!